The Opinion Exchange. One of our primary goals with this newsletter is to provide our readers with a wide range of viewpoints. As noted previously, the risk with this is that we don’t convey a clear idea of our actual views. Yet, we’ve always felt that’s a chance worth taking, particularly since we try to subsequently clear up any ambiguities.

Strange bedfellows: angry voters and market highs. It might seem odd, in the midst of the rampant bullishness engulfing markets since the election—and further stoked by Pres. Trump’s enthusiastically received congressional speech this week—to bring up the topic of social malaise. However, since Evergreen investment team members are congenital contrarians, we will do exactly that in this issue of the Gavekal EVA.

Time for a surreality check. Somehow, I don’t think I’m alone in waking up on certain mornings wondering into what parallel universe I’ve been transported. The daily surreality show I’m referring to includes, but is not limited to, watching what are decidedly unpresidential press conferences by our new president—not to mention an endless stream (of consciousness) tweets—and shockingly public feuds with the US intelligence community. These recurring events have caused global uncertainty surveys to go postal.

In the world of inflation, expectations are important. If you ask most people in the US what they believe inflation is expected to be, they are likely to say around 2-3%…why? Because that is what they have experienced over the past 5-10 years.

It is odd how a single event can cause some notable leopards to change their spots. In this case, the election of Donald Trump has caused reverberations throughout the financial world, and some apparent self-reflection by several of the world’s leading thinkers.